Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but actually it historically has been a problem. In the US it became regulated for TV in 2010 with the CALM Act, and this is just a modernization of that. https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials
I’ve noticed that a lot of bootcamp grads are, in fact, legitimately hired by their bootcamps - just not to write code. They are often brought on term by term as TAs until they find work.
I suspect this practice is a bit disingenuous of the bootcamps, a way to pad their “successfully employed” rates while keeping labor costs low. But it is hard for me to fault the candidates for putting those experiences in their resume. They need that money to keep their job searches going, and recruiters are always biasing against gaps on the resume.
If you’re being paid by them for any reason, put it on your resume. (And if you’re not…move it to the education section, where it belongs.)
Good bootcamps won't need to pad their employment numbers, because they'll be producing good quality candidates. So all you're really doing is highlighting the fact you went through a lower quality bootcamp. There's so many bootcamps I don't know which ones are legitimate and which are scams. Without that signal on the candidate's CV, I'd have no idea where the one the candidate has been through ranks. However, to me that's a clear indication that the bootcamp (or perhaps the candidate) are dodgy.
If the vast majority of applicants from one bootcamp claim to be employed by them then I can see why you would be suspicious, but I’d be hesitant to throw out all bootcamp grads who say they’ve been employed by their bootcamp.
There might be perfectly legitimate reasons to be employed. Maybe they were aiding instruction of earlier students as they got more experience, akin to a tutor or teaching assistant in colleges. Maybe they took a temporary job because they were unable to find a job right out of bootcamp, and the reasons for not being able to get a job don’t necessarily have to be negative (e.g. they had familial commitments).
Getting a job from a bootcamp is already hard and it wouldn’t quite sit right with me to reject someone outright for something that could be explainable. Perhaps if you are drowning in applicants then you are forced to be harsher out of practicality, but even then surely there’s a better filter then someone reporting what is ostensibly an experience applicable to job they’re pursuing.
> Good bootcamps won't need to pad their employment numbers, because they'll be producing good quality candidates
If you make this the metric to evaluate on, you're going to end up with the Ivy League scenario where bootcamps only admit people who would have succeeded anyway.
The POINT of education is to give people a chance to succeed who were likely to fail without it, and you have to accept a failure rate for that to work.
It’s early days, but I’m looking into more precise and domain specific object recognition in photos. Apple or Google will generally tell me if a photo contains a chair; I would like to know what kind of chair (is it a Herman Miller Aeron or a Herman Miller Embody). There are a few domains I am interested to apply this to, but at this stage I’m still learning the limitations of the tech (and any leads / insights would be appreciated!)
Before you embark further on this, see what the competition has first. If for anything, but inspiration for good ideas, as well as seeing what works well and what doesn't. You mentioned Apple and Google with their photo apps, but have you checked Google Lens?
This one is very realtime and gets in quite a detail. I don't know whether it recognizes different models of Herman Miller chairs yet, but I can open the app, point my camera at a flower or a plant, and it will (attempt to) tell me which exact specie it is.
Yep, surveying the landscape now! Lens is incredible and I know particularly for shopping them, Facebook and Amazon are working on merchandise recognition. Honestly that’s part of what makes me interested in the space - the fact that it’s possible, but right now limited to the biggest players.
The headline struck me as unusually crass for HN even before I saw the parent comment. I was a bit surprised it wasn’t rewritten. So, I guess I’m a second person.
Maybe it’s generational, but I was taught to avoid using names in puns. I definitely grew up with people who would make last name puns like this to put undue emphasis on race.
If folks doesn’t even see why that would be a problem these days, I’ll take it as a win for society - but I think the question was in good faith.
Yep. Making fun of "foreign" names is casual xenophobia. The fact that it's a pun doesn't excuse it. More generally, making fun of people's names is intellectual laziness and unprofessional at the very least.
I had the same reaction as you. Not that it's "crass" or "racist" or any other particular -ist or -ic, just that it adds nothing and seems like a childish pun attached to a serious story.
I don't think it's racist at all, that word gets overused so much that I can understand the reaction to the question.
That out of the way, I generally agree that it's poor taste. I was taught not to poke fun at things people didn't choose and can't change - their smile, laugh, handicaps, color, name, etc. Low hanging fruit, and potentially really devastating to people.
I like the look of this. I'll have to pick one up and try it. My only concern reading the description is that it could get a bit preachy ("We’ve taken off the rose-coloured goggles to lay bare Big Tech’s lack of ethics, proposing a more sustainable and humane way forward."). I'm not against this but trying to keep things light.
We are looking to hire all sorts of positions, but my team in particular is seeking a full-stack feature engineer and a backend application platform engineer (think APIs and microservices).
We're a highly collaborative team that focuses on learning, pairing, teamwork and using technology to build great things together. In this case, those things are typically around making the order and delivery experience of our fitness products as seamless and engaging as possible. We ensure our newest members have a fantastic experience "from checkout to first workout".
Recruiting was kind enough to give us this blurb to describe what we do:
Peloton uses technology + design to connect the world through fitness, empowering people to be the best version of themselves anywhere, anytime. We have reinvented the fitness industry by developing a first-of-its-kind subscription platform. Seamlessly combining hardware, software, and streaming technology, we create digital fitness and wellness content and products that Members love. In 2020 Peloton committed to becoming an antiracist organization with the launch of the Peloton Pledge.
Actually credentialism could make sense in this case. Let someone study all of the Leetcode once, on their own terms, and use the same results for every company for the next 5-10 years. A credential has issues of access and privilege, but I think it’s clear at this point the lack of a credential is also posing serious problems.
Doctors don’t have to relearn everything on the boards every time they talk to a new job, and that definitely helps combat ageism in that field.
On another part of his homepage it says he went to MIT around the same time he did YC. As someone who interviewed for YC myself while attending MIT, I am not even going to pretend I got the interview entirely independent of my background and the opportunities it gave me - and indirectly, my ability and decision to finance a very expensive education, even after financial aid.
Now, he obviously had talent to even get into a top engineering school at that age, so there is some correlation as well as causation here. Still, unless he wasn’t admitted yet or actively hid the fact from YC, it seems highly unlikely it didn’t carry some weight - especially at that age, with so much less track record to look at.
Jesus Christ. Before he got into to MIT, he dropped out of high school and landed a job at a company in San Francisco. You people act like this stuff just happens magically.
I was a high school dropout when I applied to YC — I got into MIT only after going through YC, so it’s the other way around. Going through YC definitely helped me get to MIT. There’s a meta lesson in that success begets success which is observable in the valley, but I think it’s possible for anyone to get the first seed of success to build upon.
Now that I'm on the "other side" (got my PhD from an Ivy League uni), I constantly meet people who don't even begin to grasp how far away growing up poor puts you from things and resources they take for granted. Even stuff that may seem obviously within reach.
I'll give you an example from my own life. My dream schools were Duke and MIT. I applied to Duke, but didn't even apply to MIT. Want to know why? Because it cost $40 to apply. Every school charged an application fee, so I had to be incredibly picky about where I applied to stretch the money from my $5.50 / hr part-time job at Chik-Fil-A. I had to narrow my list to 4, and I figured MIT was a long-shot so it didn't make the cut (Wofford, Furman, Duke, College of Charleston; got into all but Duke).
It wasn't until years later that I found out all you have to do is call up the admissions office and they'll waive the fee. You can't imagine how gutted I felt when I learned this. I wanted to cry. I was doing pretty good by then but my mind was filled with the alternate histories that were within reach without me even knowing it.
Somebody is probably reading this and thinking I wasn't poor, I was just stupid. Maybe so, but it's really hard to put yourself in the position of someone who has no resources, no perspective, and no people in their life to guide them through basic things like this (my parents didn't go to college). Sometimes being blessed with a good brain just isn't enough.
Your skin color, who your parents are (educated or not), where you live have a big impact on your life. The effect of parents and mentors (if you are lucky enough to find even one) have an out sized impact on your choices, I've observed this through personal experience. In high school, we had kids who i didn't think were that exceptional by any means but they got funneled into ivy leagues/top universities due to the fact that their parents were educated upper middle class types that push their kids, and give them proper guidance as to how the world really works. The talented poor kids were pushed to go to the local state universities by the parents who though top schools were out of reach/too expensive. The folks that went to the top schools went straight to SV/NYC/Boston, while the talented poor kids kinda stayed in our local Midwest cities, talk about a huge opportunity cost of being born poor.
I know for me personally, when I was in high school nearly 20 years ago they didn't tell us anything about applying to colleges until late mid April before I graduated. This is typically months after most decent schools end their deadlines.
This was a really important perspective to hear, thank you for sharing your story. At my school (Caltech) we are reviewing our admission and inclusion policies - application fee waivers are already in place, but are just one aspect of this process, as your story illustrates.
How many people do you think ARE financially able to go to MIT?
The tuition cost is $53,450, with housing costing $10,430 and to my understanding living there is required the first year.
Factor in books and food, and you're looking at $60,000-70,000/yr.
That's $240,000-280,000 for a four year degree.
I dropped out of highschool at 16, got my GED (thinking I'd be able to get a 2-year headstart on my degree without researching the cost of college), and enrolled in community college where it cost me $800 to take a single class.
Making $8/hr working in a lumber mill fulltime on top of trying to go to school, that just wasn't going to work out. After taxes my income was about $1,000/mo and I was living on my own and supporting myself, so all told I could manage to save about $200-300/mo.
It took me a third of a year to save up enough to pay for one community college class -- or I could go into crippling debt as someone who wasn't even legally an adult yet.
I eventually wound up quitting and giving up on the idea of ever obtaining a college education.
Real fantastic options, our education system and opportunity equality in the USA is just swell.
I mean, if you get into MIT, you can definitely get student loans... lenders agree that your MIT degree is proof that you'll make significant income later in life and pay off that debt.
Your situation sucks. It's not really applicable for top schools though. With a combination of financial assistance and debt, it's possible for most people coming from bad financial situations.
> It's possible for most people coming from bad financial situations.
I know this probably applies to almost nobody, but it's something I haven't seen discussed openly before:
If you're a completely average person in the US. Not a minority, coming from a middleclass family. But your family doesn't want to just hand you money -- you're kind of fucked.
There's something called "Expected Family Contribution". The country has decided that everyone's parents are just going to give away their money to their children.
> Eligibility for need-based financial aid is determined by a formula that subtracts the student’s expected family contribution (EFC) from a college’s total cost of attendance. This determines financial need. The equation looks like this: (cost of attendance – EFC = financial need).
So if your parents are say, by-your-bootstraps capitalists, and they go "Get a job bum, you want something, go work for it." then you're shit outta luck.
I applied for financial aid and I was denied.
"Your parents make too much money."
"Well, that's nice for them. I don't live with my parents and they have no interest in financially supporting me, so can't you calculate it from my $8/hr wage?"
"No, sorry. You can try waiting to go to college until you're no longer considered a dependent."
I'm not trying to make this out to be a sob story, but if you're a completely unremarkable individual without family contribution, your only way in is debt. And not even reasonable debt, that you could work a regular job and pay off in a few years, but obscene debt.
This applies to a lot more people than you think, and regardless of whether they're a minority or not (whatever that even means anymore). Also even if your family does want to support you, the rates are far higher than what middle-class can realistically contribute. Ridiculous debt is the only option on the table for the majority of college students these days.
They do their best to prevent it, but a lot of students don’t even apply because they or their parents think they can’t afford it. Access to education about financial aid itself is a privilege. That has got to be the biggest limiter by absolute volume of people.
It “felt” more uncommon that someone actually turns down an MIT offer after they see the package, as they do their best to provide student work aid and students tend to be optimists about debt - but I only saw the people who said yes, so my data is totally biased. I’ll note that one common situation is folks who can technically “afford” MIT, but are offered a full ride elsewhere - a lot of folks I knew who joined felt some pressure to save money by taking the scholarship elsewhere, and struggled to turn it down.
> How many people are not going to MIT because they are financially unable?
I have heard MIT has slightly less complete need-based financial aid than some of the other big name private schools, but still much better than most before-aid cheaper schools, so probably some but relatively few of the people who would otherwise go to MIT, and those few are probably going to other big name private schools, not excluded from education.
There's probably a lot more not applying because they think they wouldn't be able to afford it, because knowledge of the sticker price of big name colleges seems far more widespread than knowledge of the amount of school-based need-based aid they tend to have available.
Our prestigious higher education institutions have become hedge funds with small educational arms. Over the last decades billions of dollars has been transferred from middle class households to the hedge funds of these universities. If their goal was to maximize education they wouldn't artificially limit admissions so as to increase the rarity of their luxury brand.
I’ve also seen organizations realize in that situation that they can change or automate things as to reduce the consequences of the exceptions, or to make rules simpler to follow, in justifying drawing that firm line. Trust is won when people see you as being fair, and part of being fair is knowing your perspective has been heard and considered.
I started reading this article excited that Recurse had gone online and, after following RC and Hackruiter for almost a decade, I might now be able to do it. I ended it in a similar state as the author - bewildered as what to think. I know the folks running that program don’t do anything lightly, and they thought long and hard about whether that decision best served their mission and goals. Still, I’m torn.
I understand people have to draw the line somewhere, but any time “exceptions can be made in an emergency”, that is a sign that an experience can, albeit maybe with considerable pain, be made asynchronous. In a remote first world, I think more and more things will be forced to become asynchronous, whether we like it or not.
I’m reminded of make-up tests. Professors dread making them, they take real time, and they indirectly “reward” those who can’t make the first sitting (with more study time, etc). Some do refuse to do it. Still, universities compel teachers to do it because the value of having each student tested is considered a crucial part of the mission.
I get that this is a different situation; there’s a social unity component, some experiences can’t be exactly recreated. But is completely booting someone for missing one initial meeting in spirit with the mission? Is so much lost from a recorded version that it is truly better for that seat to stay empty for 6 weeks and one less person to be able to join the next batch as a result of a time zone gaffe? And is it really fair to say that because no one else had this problem, the six months of evolution post-COVID should match the same intentionality and strictness of running an in-person program for a decade?
I hope that at the very least, folks over there are looking at what happened with an empathetic lens - especially if they are truly willing to take this person for the next batch, and want to see them succeed.
> but any time “exceptions can be made in an emergency”, that is a sign that an experience can, albeit maybe with considerable pain, be made asynchronous.
It's not a question of whether or not something could possibly be made asynchronous. Most things could be made asynchronous with enough investment of time, money, energy, and staff.
The real question is what are the tradeoffs and what are the consequences. If the RC is trying to build a community, making the group orientation asynchronous wouldn't have the same effect.
Having a true emergency is an entirely different situation than just sleeping in (OP admits he ignored the calendar invite because it was at 7:15AM). In a true emergency, people are usually willing to go out of their way to make exceptions. When someone simply ignores e-mails and sleeps in, it's not fair to ask other people to go above and beyond to cater to that person.
The way you’re communicating is wildly unempathetic, and I truly hope your zero-tolerance faux-friendly “better for everyone” attitude isn’t ruining other students’ experiences. You’re painting the author as some sort of lazy individual who does things on his own accord. “Sleeping in” and “ignoring emails” doesn’t seem to be accurately portraying. Being online at 8AM is not “sleeping in” by most people’s standards. Perusing and participating in discussions is “not ignoring emails”. He made a mistake, RC has zero tolerance for it.
Why not just say “We have a zero tolerance policy for missing mandatory events” without all of the non-sequitur pseudo-rationalization? That’s OK. People may not agree with it, and it may hurt other people financially, but at least it’s direct and honest.
I’ll grant that when I read the article, I missed the part where he admitted to intentionally ignoring the invite. If they tossed him for what they considered a values mismatch, that’s obviously a little different. Still, I feel like a “Listen bub!” voice conversation could have helped here, versus relying on email - if only in delivering the bad news better, if not actually hearing out the apology and talking over potential next steps. And I give him points for admitting to that mistake - that strikes me as far more in line with their values than lying and saying his mother was sick (which he could have trivially done).
As for asynchronicity, I totally get that something will be lost. The question is whether enough will be lost as to render the participant totally unable to learn those values over, say, the next few days and catch up. But something might be gained as well - it’s possible that these synchronous moments are an actual bottleneck. Experimenting with async could result in them handling more students with less staff.
Broadcasting and passive communication will always be lossy in any format. You’re absolutely right that a “hey bub” moment would have really clearly indicated whether the author was willing to buckle down or not.
And, even better, they could have had that discussion in the interview. “We aren’t here for fun, we are where to X. We demand your full attention even if things sit outside your personal comfort zone in sleeping, etc.” But I guess it’s easier to just kick people out of the program than to be delicate and upfront with wording and seriousness.
